What were the Last People Like? The Backstories
by justincbenedict
Summary: What of the lives of Phil,(Tandy), Carol,Todd,Phil (Alpha),Melissa,and the rest of the survivors of this bizaare rendition of "The Stand"? How did they live before...and then what else happened after they met?
1. Chapter 1

AWFUL LONELY ALL OF A SUDDEN

Phil checked his e-mail. Nothing at spankmymonkey69 at hotmail. Wait, there was nothing...at all. Yesterday, Phil noticed that he couldn't get onto any of his adult entertainment sites, for a moment he'd wondered if Alice had sneaked some anti-porn thing on his computer...but his little sister of course, was dead, as was her husband and their kids who lived on the upper floors of the house.

That was sad. Phil was just living with Alice and her husband temporarily, until he-well it had been almost four years. His brother-in-law kept going on as if Phil had been in their basement a goddamn DECADE, but technically, no...

It had been twenty-nine months, and then Mom had agreed to send Phil a check to go to tree surgery academy in Missoula, Montana, and Phil had moved OUT of Alice and Doug's, gone UP to Montana, discovered the Western Larch (popularly called Tamarack) tree provoked his eczema, and then had moved BACK to Tucson, and into Alice and Doug's again.

Phil had been at the pruning school for three weeks. And then he'd left again sixteen months later...when he and the married lady he'd met at traffic school had gone to the writer's colony in Phoenix. That had only lasted fifty-two days...

And so it had been four years since Phil had moved BACK in, thank you Doug...what a nagging asshole. But Doug had died of the plague, along with Alice, and little Douglas the Third, and Laurel and little Constance.

So now they were dead upstairs, and Phil's boss Candace at Manpower had died, though she'd not sent Phil many assignments before she'd gone. (When you learn a swell program like WordPerfect, you want to SPECIALIZE, not pick up all these other things...it was funny, in interviews, when Phil said "I don't do Windows" Get it?)

Phil looked over to where Chet was sleeping. Hiding out from his child support payments Chet had blown in about a week ago, right after the hearse had taken Doug away (kinda good thing, since Doug didn't like Chet) and Phil and Chet had had a party like they'd not had since that totally ridiculous, overblown deal when they got accused of burning down the Omega Nu House at Arizona State...

So funny. back then, Chuck was just mad that the Omegas had rejected him, and Phil of course wasn't even a student at ASU...just been psychovacked out of the Navy. But twenty years later, they were still wild men! But now there was no one to hang out with...everyone had perished.

"Chester!" Phil called. "Chester O'Connor...Chet, wake up. C'mon, we got in early last night, remember? After we left Sid coughing up his lungs at the E.R...we came home about twelve, right? All the bars in town are closed now...but we could go to 7-Eleven, it looked closed too...we could break in and get some beer...no one is out, whole town's dead. It's just you and me, man."

"C'mon, wake up. We can drive around...I know you don't have a license anymore, but there are no cops! I don't have to do my community service, washing police cars, for that incident I was telling you about, either. There's no such thing as shoplifting anymore...it's all free. Chet?"

Phil walked over and began gently kicking Chet, who had hogged the waterbed.

"Wake up, you didn't have more than three Long Island Iced Teas...Chet? Oh, shit."

Phil looked down at Chet's body, saw the familiar empurpled tongue hanging out...all the plague-ees seemed to have it at the end.

"Chet, I have a secret to tell you now...you can't blab it, can ya? My middle name? I told you (sob) and Johnny Reimer back when we (sob) were in Cub Scouts that it was Dakota...but it's really (sob) Tandy."

Crying bitterly, Phillip Tandy Miller exited Doug and Alice's basement forever.


	2. Chapter 2

CAROL'S SUNNY OPTIMISM

Vertigo if it was a boy, and Vendetta if it was a girl. Dennis hadn't ever said whether he'd marry Carol, but those were the names he mentioned, if they had babies.

Carol's last name was Pilbasian, and Dennis's had been McDermott...would they have hyphenated it? But Dennis only talked about marriage and love when they were about to do IT..., which he liked, a lot but wasn't really good at.

Carol had been dating Bronwyn, a transgender homeless person (Carol had been holding a hotdog she'd bought from a vendor, and had offered Bron half in lieu of a quarter) but Bron had gone to White Hill Neuropsychiatric abruptly...and then Carol had met Dennis...and she hadn't been sure about him...Grandma always said guys who borrow money are trouble...Dennis had his issues!

But when you meet a guy at Balticon, the big Science Fiction Convention on the East Coast, and then he also takes off his chain mail for you in the hotel room at Chilicon, down in Texas, it's love, isn't it?

And Dennis loved the glitter sweatshirt Carol had made him, to honor his "My Little Pony" passion. He was way into Dungeons and Dragons and Sci-Fi, but Carol had just been drawing Dennis out (over e-mail, they'd only met in person five times that year) when he' d passed on from the Plague.

Carol hadn't really even liked Science Fiction, but she'd been living in Baltimore, and had kinda gone to the convention, and Dennis had been so nice. (He'd had heartbreak, Dennis had. When Dennis graduated from high school, his dad took his keys, and gave him the address to a Sunoco station where he'd start work, and a month's rent in a dirtbag motel)

So why not follow Dennis to the other conventions? But was that really dating? Carol liked Dennis though...they'd talked about marriage, right?

But now Dennis was gone. He'd died. And Carol knew it was true-Dennis had tried weird dodges for breaking up with her before, the restraining order and all, but the e-mail from his mom seemed really genuine, and besides, everyone here was dead, too.

Carol lived in Delaware now, and it was a small, and pretty bare state. No animals, either. Carol's roommates had died while she was at her candle maker's group in Wilmington...and what now?

Jeez, it was so quiet now. Carol had not known what to do with the bodies, but she'd finally stored them in the basement of the apartment building. Taking them to be buried might be tough...Glenn, her male roomie, had been really, really overweight.

Carol was standing outside a Subaru dealership, reading her Iphone...the message from Dennis's mother was three days old. The Iphone had gone dead for a while, and now was just kind of flickering. Maybe Carol should drive to Nevada, where Dennis lived, just for the heck of it.

Carol walked onto the Subaru lot, and looked at a pretty egg-shell white car. No one was there to stop her...and she didn't need keys.

Carol had, at one time been corresponding with another prospective boyfriend at Love A Convict Dot Org , and he'd told her all sorts of awesome stuff, that she'd never thought would be useful, but in moments she was pulling the car out of the lot and she was on her way.

It was a little lonely, but Carol had always been a gal who could depend on her own company-she'd been raised and homeschooled by her Grandma Hastings, and they'd spent a lot of time knitting and watching "The Food Channel" in silence.

When Carol had finally gotten to the University of Maryland-Salisbury, she'd found people were too preoccupied with sex and drugs and grade grubbing to talk much, about anything cheerful.

She had gotten a brief boyfriend at the Campus Crusade for Christ, but when he made her go to Owings Mills for the abortion, Carol had wondered at Farley's real commitment to the Man Upstairs.

So-Carol didn't really need anybody to talk to...she could just talk to herself, and listen to Amy Grant CD's and zoom around in the Subaru...it's a big place, America!

It was kind of interesting, driving around, across the country, (The Subaru had an awesome GPS) and dropping into restaurants and stuff. Carol had to ignore some icky dead people at tables, but she knew how to go into the kitchens, and cut off some frozen steak...and she'd gone to a couple of fabric stores, too...you gotta jazz up your blouses, right?

It was outside Reno that Carol changed her route. Spray painted across a billboard advertising organic condoms was the message "ALIVE IN TUCSON" and it looked as if it had been written in a strong, manly hand.


End file.
